


of all new things, you were my favourite

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Aliens, Ambiguous Relationships, Fluff, Other, Pure Unadulterated Fluff, Sharing a Bed, Skirts, seriously. so much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5728348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is a curious non-binary alien who doesn’t understand human culture but really likes to wear pastel pink skirts. And aliens, Phil learns, are a lot to handle – or maybe that’s just Dan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of all new things, you were my favourite

**Author's Note:**

> there’s so much dialogue in this and also dan’s an alien so he’s basically non-binary and that’s p cool. this is meant to be a pretty easy read; what more could u ask for than 8k words of a fluffy alien au? just enjoy the unadulterated fluff ok thanks

So, a few days ago, Phil would’ve been surprised at the sight of a large humanoid barging into his room at three in the morning with a foaming mouth. Alas, this was not a few days ago.

“Phiw,” the foaming-mouthed one said, trying not to close his lips. “something weird happened.”

“What? Dan, what’d you do now?” Phil rubbed his eyes, sitting up in the bed. He eyed Dan, whose jaw hung open, bubbles spilling out the sides.

“I ate–” he spit some of the bubbles out onto the floor. “–I ate a weird piece of candy.”

“I don’t think–” Phil stopped himself mid-sentence, clambering out of his bed. “Show me what you ate.” He pressed his hand to his forehead, taking a deep breath and following Dan out of the room (but not without stepping in the pile of bubbles Dan had left on the floor).

Dan navigated through the hallway and into the kitchen, gesturing at a box of dishwasher tablets.

“Oh, God.” Phil burst out into laughter. “I’m sure that doesn’t taste great.”

Dan shook his head, his mouth still wide open and foaming.

“Spit it out, you idiot.” Phil shook his head as Dan spat the tablet into the sink and proceeded to scrape his tongue with his hands.

“What _was_ that?” he asked after Phil handed him a glass of water.

“Soap. Like, to clean dishes with.”

“Then why do they make it so tasty looking? It even smells good!” Dan was appalled, chugging the water.

“I don’t know; they just do. It’s not meant to be eaten.” Phil refilled Dan’s water after he’d finished.

“Obviously.” Dan frowned. “Eck. How am I supposed to tell the difference?”

Phil chuckled, “Well you should know now, shouldn’t you?”

“With those! But what about other tricks? What if I try to eat poison thinking it’s a sweet?”

“Guess you’ll have to steer clear of all things that look like sweets, then.” Phil shrugged. “Anyway, who knows if you’ll get poisoned by the same things humans do.”

Right. Alien-Dan. Dan the alien. Extraterrestrial life staying in Phil’s flat.

Dan had explained that he was a shape-shifting alien who was on the run from some form of police on his own planet and he needed Phil’s help to assimilate into the human culture so that he wouldn’t be found. Phil didn’t have much of a choice but to let him stay, after all, _how frickin’ cool is it for an alien to show up at your doorstep?_ Of course, Phil made Dan prove he was an alien and not someone who planned on sneaking into his house and stealing his identity or something. (Dan, in response, had shifted his hand into that of a giraffe’s right before Phil’s eyes. Phil let him inside.)

So far, Dan had learned through lots of trial and error. Eating a dishwasher tablet just provided more information, really. Phil felt like he was raising an extremely clumsy, large, and strange child.

“But I don’t _want_ to avoid sweets!” Dan whined.

“Too bad,” Phil tutted. “I need to go back to sleep, though.”

“ _Sleep_. Ha.”

Dan found the concept of sleep strange, anyway. He didn’t need any, as established on the first night when Phil yawned and said he’d better go to bed, but Dan raised an eyebrow and asked what he meant. No matter how much Phil explained that humans just shut their eyes and wake up some hours later – he didn’t bother explain dreams – Dan didn’t understand. He concluded that humans needed to plug in at night and recharge; “If that helps you understand, sure. Even though that’s not what it is at all.”

“Good night, Dan.”  
  
“It’s _morning_ , really, but time is a human construct,” Dan reminded Phil, who sighed and continued his way back into his bedroom.

* * *

As Phil brushed his teeth later that morning, Dan walked into the bathroom without a second thought on knocking.

“Jesus, Dan! I could’ve been naked!”

“ _Ooh_ , your fragile human modesty. Forbid I see your pale flesh.” Dan mocked, then stared at the toothbrush in Phil’s hand with confusion. “And what’s that?”

“A toothbrush.”

“What’re you doing with it?” Dan tilted his head to see inside Phil’s mouth. “Are you _massaging_ your skeleton?”

“I’m cleaning my teeth…” Phil trailed, glancing down at his toothbrush and then back at Dan.

“Ah, right.” Dan looked as though he took a mental note. “Is that something every human does?”

“Most of us.”

“Is it something _I_ should do?”

“Probably, yeah. I mean, I doubt you’ll be kissing anybody anytime soon, but you should still take care of your teeth.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I’ll cleanse my teeth after you’re done with that.” He tapped his fingertip against the end of Phil’s toothbrush.

“No, no, no,” Phil spat his toothpaste into the sink, “You don’t use the same one as me.”

“Why not? Don’t wanna catch _Alienitis_?”

“Is that a real thing?” Phil questioned, rinsing his toothbrush off in the sink before rummaging in a drawer to find a spare.

“No.” Dan cracked a smile, taking the extra toothbrush from Phil’s hand. He stuck the toothbrush in his mouth and let go of it, sucking on it like some sort of lollipop.

“What’re you doing?”

“Am I doing it wrong?”

“Absolutely.” Phil laughed, taking the handle of Dan’s toothbrush and beginning to brush it along his teeth. “It’s like this, but you’re supposed to have toothpaste as well.”

“That sounds disgusting. Paste of teeth that you put _back_ on your teeth? I’ll pass.”

“That’s not–” Phil sighed, “Never mind.”

After Dan had finished scrubbing his teeth with a dry toothbrush, he followed Phil out of the bathroom and into the lounge. Phil flopped onto the couch, and Dan sat on the floor. Phil shook his head and grabbed his laptop off of the table in front of him, pulling up Twitter.

“What do you humans do all day?” Dan questioned, looking down at the white ring on his shirt.

“Lots of people have jobs, where they go and work all day and get paid for it.” Phil browsed his timeline as Dan continued on the subject.

“I didn’t understand most of the words you said just then, but why don’t you have a ‘job’?”

“I have a different kind of job. I can do it from home.”

“And this is your home.” Dan figured, peering around the room. He liked all the brightly colored items that surround him, especially the chairs.

“Yes, this is where I live.”

“Is this _my_ home?” Dan questioned, looking up at Phil.

“I don’t really know. That’s up to you, I guess.”

“Well, I _am_ living here,” Dan established, “or at least I have been.”

“Yeah.”

“So this is my home then?” he inquired, waiting for Phil to just say ‘yes’.

“If you want it to be,” Phil answered, scratching the back of his neck.

Dan didn’t respond after that, he just thought about it.

When Phil glanced back down at Dan, he realized that the latter was still clad in the clothing Phil had lent him when he first arrived (since he had arrived in a little more than nothing).

“Do you want a change of clothes?” Phil spoke up.

“Why would I need any more?”

“They get _dirty_.”

“They do? That’s silly. Why do you even wear them?” Dan tugged at the hem of his shirt.

“ _Human modesty_ ,” Phil repeated Dan’s phrase from earlier, causing the alien to roll his eyes – a trait he’d picked up from Phil.

“Fine, then. I’ll take some more.”

Phil snorted. “You’re _welcome_.”

Dan didn’t understand the cue, and stood up from the floor.

“You can stay in here. I’ll grab you something.” Phil went to his room and rummaged through some of his clothes, trying to pick something he wouldn’t miss too much. He decided on giving Dan an old green jumper and another t-shirt; Dan could just wear the same jeans.

“Here you are,” Phil said as he walked back into the room, dropping the clothes in Dan’s arms.

Dan began to strip free of his clothing as soon as he was given the new pieces, causing Phil to shield his eyes. Dan let out a laugh before mumbling, “ _weak human modesty_.”

* * *

Gender turned out to be another thing Dan found peculiar. He expressed so to Phil that night, asking, “So there’re two types of humans?”

“What do you mean?” Phil, who had just been watching television, tore his gaze from the screen to look at Dan.

“Like, there’re two different kinds of you?” Dan didn’t really know how to word it.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Phil replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Uhh, some of you have long hair and others have short hair?”

“Oh!” Phil laughed, “You mean gender.”

The word didn’t mean anything to Dan but he still said, “Yeah. So there’re two different kinds?”

“No, there’re lots of different genders.”

“Are there?”

“Yeah,” Phil started, “There are the two most ‘known’ ones, male and female. I’m male.”

“What am I?” Dan asked.

“That’s up to you. There are other genders, though. You don’t have to pick one. You can be non-binary, too.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you don’t fit in the gender binary; so like, you’re not a boy or a girl.”

“Well, I’m not a boy or a girl. I’m an _alien_.” Dan deadpanned.

“Very true.” Phil paused. “I’ve been calling you ‘he’, which is kind of a masculine pronoun. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” Dan shrugged, not comprehending what Phil had just asked. “I don’t really get it, anyway.”

“That’s fine. It’s all confusing for me, too.”

“So why do some of you have long hair and others have short?”

“It’s a personal choice,” Phil explained, trying to keep it simple for Dan.

“My hair looks like yours,” Dan stated, brushing his hair across his forehead.

“It does, yeah.” Phil chuckled, raising his hand to sweep a stray strand of Dan’s hair into place.

Dan grinned in response, then asked “So what’s the deal with these things?” while pointing at his eyebrows.

* * *

Phil decided the pair needed to go shopping that next day. So, after he’d taken a shower (and explained to Dan what a shower was and that _no,_ they couldn’t take one together) he grabbed his wallet and lead Dan out the door.

On the way to the mall, Dan asked the cab driver when the vehicle would take off. Phil sighed and shook his head, apologizing to the cabbie and saying Dan had just gotten drugged at the dentist so he was acting a bit wonky. Dan didn’t object as he didn’t know what any of the words meant.

Upon arrival, Phil made sure to explain to his alien companion that shopping meant to spend money on things, and money was not a thing Dan possessed. He couldn’t just walk out of stores with things, Phil told him. So, Phil would buy things that Dan liked for him. Dan grasped the concept quite minimally, but nodded anyway.

As they walked into the supermarket, Dan found himself overwhelmed with choices. They entered the first store to the left, which was divided into “women’s” and “men’s” sections.

“You don’t have to pay attention to that. Go wherever,” Phil assured, following Dan around the store.

“Why do you all need this many different ones?” Dan asked, going through a rack of shirts that were all the same style but different colors.

“Everyone likes different things,” Phil shrugged, watching Dan flick through the rack.

Dan nodded in response, moving on to a different section of the store. He mindlessly looked at rack after rack of clothing before asking Phil, “Can you pick something out for me? I don’t really get what I’m doing.”

“Of course!” Phil laughed, turning around to the rack behind him. He shuffled through the clothing until he came across a black jumper with a white collar at the top. “How about this?”

Dan cocked his head, analyzing the piece of clothing before him.

“I like the color,” he decided, taking the cloth from Phil. “And this thing.” He flicked at the collar.

“When we get you a few more things, you can try them on to make sure you really like them on you.”

“This is all so strange.” Dan scanned the room around him; all the people browsing through racks.

“And you being a shape-shifting alien isn’t?” Phil softly elbowed Dan, to which Dan yelped.

“Hey! What was that for?” He elbowed Phil back, but harder.

“Hey, hey. It’s not–” Phil shook his head. “Never mind.”

Dan rolled his eyes and searched through more racks to find black clothing, taking every black article he could find and draping it over his arm. Phil almost stopped him, but figured Dan wouldn’t understand that _every_ black piece of clothing wouldn’t fit him (unless he shifted for it to fit him, Phil supposed).

When Dan had acquired a heaping pile of sable clothing, Phil suggested they head to a dressing room. Dan agreed, but didn’t understand to what he was agreeing. Anyway, he followed behind Phil through the store until something else caught his eye.

Phil didn’t realize Dan had stopped following him until he turned around and the latter wasn’t there. Instead, Dan had wandered over to another section of the store and set down his heap of black clothes on the floor. Phil strided over and picked up the clothes, catching up with Dan after abandoning a few articles of clothing that Phil knew Dan would never wear or fit into.

He found Dan staring at a row of pastel pinks, wavering his hands over the clothes but not touching them.

“What’d you find?” Phil asked, causing Dan to jump.

“Oh!” he smiled, “Look at this color; it’s so nice.”

“Yeah? Do you like it?” Phil set his hand down on one of the shirts, Dan’s eyes flicking to it.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s grab some of these then, too, for you to try on,” Phil suggested, thumbing through the pinks before taking out a jumper and adding it to the pile of black clothing.

Dan grabbed a bunch of pink things and held onto them, “Okay.”

Phil lead the way to the dressing room again, Dan following like a lost duckling. Nothing distracted him this time, so the duo arrived at the rooms with more black and pink clothes than necessary.

An employee let them into a dressing room, Dan requesting that Phil stay in the room with him because he didn’t know what he was doing. Phil obliged, of course. He didn’t want Dan walking out of the dressing room wearing all the clothes at once or something else absurd like that.

After struggling on a pair of skinny jeans, Dan groaned as they wouldn’t button at the top. Phil had been looking down at his phone rather than watching Dan get undressed, but he glanced up at the noise.

“It won’t click on!” Dan poked at the button on the pants.

“Yeah. That’s the thing; not everything you took is gonna fit you,” Phil explained with a shrug, his focus directed back at his phone.

“What?” Dan furrowed his eyebrows, glaring at the heap of clothing he had picked out. “You’re saying I have to put this all on but some of it won’t even _fit_ me?”

“I mean, that’s why they have sizes on the tags.”

Dan picked up a shirt to see a little number with a letter next to it on a flap inside the collar.

“Well, what size am I?”

“I don’t know, Dan,” Phil shook his head, but then analyzed Dan for a second, “You’re probably just a little bigger than me.”

Phil sorted through the clothes for Dan, throwing the ones he knew for sure wouldn’t fit Dan off to the side. That eliminated about half of the pile. After he’d finished, Dan began to strip again, shimmying out of the much-too-tight skinny jeans.

“Wait, Dan,” Phil spoke up, examining Dan’s now bare legs, “Do you have any leg hair…?”

“Hmm?” Dan hummed, picking up another thing to try on.

“Hair, like the stuff on your head, except on your legs. You don’t have any.” Phil tried to roll up his jeans to show Dan what he was talking about.

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t want that, so I didn’t choose to have any.” Dan stated flatly, inspecting the piece of clothing he had picked up, turning it around in his hands. “I don’t get what this is.”

Dan held the pink article up, staring at it in confusion. He began to put it on over his head, but Phil stopped him; Phil had immediately recognized it.

“That’s called a skirt,” Phil smiled, “and you wear it on your legs. It’s like pants without the leg parts.” He couldn’t think of any other way to explain it as Dan wouldn’t know what a dress was.

Dan pursed his lips and slipped the skirt onto his legs, resting the waistband on his hips. He twisted a bit, causing the pink material to whirl around him. He let out a little giggle and spun more.

“You like it?” Phil chuckled, watching Dan spin around and look at his reflection in the mirror.

“This is _so_ much nicer than those,” he said, referring to the skinny jeans he had been wearing. “Why doesn’t everyone wear skirts?”

* * *

And so, the two returned to Phil’s flat with four bags full of clothing for Dan, two of the bags stuffed with only skirts. The other two held various black jumpers and t-shirts, one jumper with a stereotypical green alien head on it and the words “I BELIEVE” spread across the top. (Dan immediately grasped the concept of irony, and he thought the shirt was hilarious. “This is what you humans think aliens look like?” He’d blurted into laughter so hard he’d bent over and rested his hands on his knees.)

Eventually the pair ended up on the couch, Dan sitting criss-cross with his skirt draped over his legs. He intently played with the hem of the skirt while Phil fumbled around to find the remote for the television.

After he’d wedged the remote out of between the cushions and opened the television guide, he asked Dan, “what’d you like to watch?”

“Uhhm,” Dan furrowed his brows, “I have no clue.”

“I figured.” Phil began flicking through the channels, until Dan said, “stop.”

“Hm?”

“What’s that?” Dan referred to a movie that came up onscreen.

“You don’t wanna watch that,” Phil snorted, continuing down the list.

“Yes I do!” Dan exclaimed, trying to make a decision for himself.

“You want to watch _The Notebook_? Seriously?” Phil groaned, “Do you even know what love is?”

“What?”

Phil shook his head. “We’re not watching that. I’ve already seen it, like, three times.”

“We’re watching it!” Dan demanded, a playful smile upon his lips.

Phil sighed, selecting the film. It had already been on for half an hour, but it’s not like Dan would understand anything anyway.

Dan did, however, stare intently at the screen for the next ten minutes, leaving Phil to groan internally and settle on watching it with him.

Surprisingly, as the movie progressed, Dan didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t cry; he didn’t laugh; he just watched. When the movie finished, though; that was another story.

“So..?” Phil spoke up as the credits rolled.

“So what?” Dan asked, watching the names on screen.

“What’d you think?”

“I think I have a much better grasp on humanity, now,” Dan answered, shrugging.

“Oh, no,” Phil cringed, “We’re not like that. It’s a _movie,_ Dan.”

“So?”

“Movies aren’t _real_.”

“What?!” Dan was taken aback, “Then what’d I just watch?”

“You watched a love story,” Phil explained bleakly, picking at his fingernails.

“ _Love_ ,” Dan said, as if testing the word on his tongue. “And that is?”

Phil thought for a second before saying, “I really don’t know how to… define it. Whatever they felt in the movie, I guess.”

Dan looked quizzical, “Do all you humans ‘love’ each other?”

“No.”

Dan blinked slowly a few times, then squinted his eyes. He obviously didn’t quite get his head around the concept.

“Do you love me?” he eventually asked, raising an eyebrow.

Phil spoke after a lengthy span of silence, “It’s more confusing than just ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ Dan.”

“I don’t see how it is,” Dan replied, trying to meet Phil’s eyes but not achieving so.

“Well, it just is.” Phil sat up on the sofa, quick to change the subject, “Do you want anything to eat? It’s getting late.”

Dan forgot the subject almost immediately, eager to remind Phil that _“Time is a human construct that I feel no need to abide by.”_

Phil sighed and stood up, padding to the kitchen. He decided on making two mugs of hot chocolate, as they’d already eaten pizza earlier and didn’t need another full meal.

Soon after Phil had gotten the ingredients out, Dan, too, entered the kitchen with something else on his mind.

“Also, I didn’t get what they were doing when they smushed their faces together,” he stated abruptly.

“You mean kissing?” Phil tittered in response.

“Sure, if that’s what you people call smushing your faces together.”

“I guess,” Phil paused, “What’re you confused about, then?”

“Just, _why_ they were doing it.”

Phil shrugged while sticking one of the mugs in the microwave, “Kissing just kind of feels nice. I don’t know. It shows someone you care about them?” he stopped, “Sometimes.”

“I can’t imagine it would feel very nice,” Dan edged, watching the mug spin in the microwave.

“It depends,” Phil glanced to the alien next to him, content on watching the microwave.

“Oh,” he said, “Can we?”

“Can we _kiss_?” Phil choked.

“Yeah.”

Phil didn’t even notice the beeping of the microwave as Dan turned to look at him.

“You’re sure you want to?” Phil pursed his lips.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know; it’s kind of an intimate thing to do with someone.” He pulled at the sleeve of his t-shirt. He may have grown more and more fond of Dan every day, but he didn’t quite think this was the right thing to do. Not with Dan’s minimal level of understanding, anyway.

Dan looked at his feet, reaching up and touching his own lips before glancing back at Phil’s. Phil’s heart jumped in his chest.

“Why is this weird?” Dan questioned, “Why do I feel weird right now?”

“Just…” Phil cleared his throat, “Never mind that.” He took the mug out of the microwave, handing it to Dan. “This is hot chocolate.”

Dan struggled to switch the subject so quickly this time, but he cooperated, anyway.

“Hot… chocolate?” He had eaten solid chocolate before, so he gave an incredulous look to the drink before him.

Phil just nodded, popping his mug into the microwave as well.

After his drink had finished heating, they both went back into the lounge and took a seat on the sofa, neither mentioning what had been considered in the kitchen. Phil figured Dan had been oblivious and mostly confused, and he didn’t want to take advantage of Dan in any way.

“This is actually really good,” Dan spoke into the cup, causing some to spill out onto him.

“Oh! Let me get you–” Phil stopped mid-sentence when he realized Dan had just pressed his fingertips to the spill and it had gone away.

“What…?” Dan didn’t know why Phil was staring at him as if he’d just grown a third eye.

“What did you just… what did you just do?” Phil stared at Dan’s shirt where the drink had spilled.

“I drank it?”

“You… drank it off of your shirt. With your fingers.” Phil tore his sight away.

“Yeah?”

“Uh,” Phil creased his brow, “humans can’t do that.”

“Ah.” Dan glanced down at his shirt. “Good thing I’m not human then, right?” he joked, taking another drink of his hot chocolate.

“I guess, but aren’t you trying to be like us?” Phil asked.

“Well, yeah. But in front of you it doesn’t really matter,” Dan explained, finishing his drink and setting the mug on the coffee table.

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose not.” Phil paused. “Can you… tell me about _your_ culture?”

Dan beamed at that, “I thought you’d never ask.”

He told first of the basic things, such as the fact his species didn’t actually hold a shape of its own; each individual took the form of another species – “We’re kind of like… cookie-cutters? Or are we the cookies…?” Dan said that his favorite form so far had been that of a very small, bouncy kind of alien. Phil pictured Dan’s face on a bouncy-ball.

Phil did find it strange that Dan’s face wasn’t permanent; he could technically change it any time he chose to. (And well, Phil quite liked Dan’s face. He hoped for it not to change, ever, but he didn’t say that aloud.)

After that, Dan spoke of many cultural nuances, and said a few phrases in his own native language, which was mostly based on sight and touch rather than sound. Dan could speak any language he came in contact with, however, and Phil thought that was incredibly cool.

“So, why’d you decide to come here?” Phil pondered. After all, of the infinite amount of places Dan could’ve run off to, Earth didn’t seem like a very prominent destination. Maybe that was the point.

“To Earth? I’d never been here before. And, to put it simply, you all kind of look funny and I wanted to try it.” Dan smirked teasingly.

“ _Hey!_ ” Phil scoffed.

“I’m only telling the truth,” Dan continued to poke fun, “Your bodies are so protruding and lumpy and, for lack of a better word, stringy.”

“Stringy?” Phil lifted his arm and looked at it.

“I mean on the inside.” Dan pointed at his veins.

Phil raised an eyebrow but then shrugged as if to say “I guess so.”

“And why are you on the run again?” Phil inquired after a few ticks of silence, even though Dan hadn’t ever told him specifics before. He glanced at the clock and it read 3:37 A.M., but he brushed it off. He didn’t have plans for tomorrow, and anyway, “time’s a human construct.”

As it turned out, Phil didn’t have a clue what was in store when he asked that question.

“Uh, so…” Dan swallowed, “It is quite possible that I impersonated someone else and that someone happened to be the leader of our species and I might have… in terms that you can fathom, impersonated them for a long _time_ ,” Dan rolled his eyes at his own use of the word “time,” but he didn’t know how else to explain to Phil in a way he could understand. “and maybe I made a lot of… big decisions about things you wouldn’t understand no matter how much I could explain to you about it.”

“Woah,” Phil was wide-eyed, imagining himself disguised as the prime minister. (He’s not sure he’d ever want to disguise himself as the current prime minister. Maybe the next one.)

“Yeah, _woah_.” Dan’s face portrayed faint embarrassment, “It is also very likely that I’m on a galactic level _Wanted_ list.”

Phil blinked. “You’re saying I’m housing a _galactic_ criminal.”

“Well, yes. But you’re safe, I promise. They won’t find me here. And even if they do, I won’t let them do anything to you,” Dan clarified, though not especially helping Phil’s nerves.

“I’d thought you were maybe a _thief_ or something,” Phil laughed to hide his shock. “Not an– I don’t even what to say.”

“There’s a name for it in my own language, but it doesn’t translate to any other.” Dan pursed his lips.

“Okay, right. There’s just one thing I have to clear up so that I can sleep tonight.” Phil tried to put on his most serious face. “Have you ever… harmed anyone?”

“No. No!” Dan assured, “I did some bad things, but more on the terms of… treason. I had a good purpose, though. The people that lead my species were absolutely oblivious to everything and anything that affected anyone but them. I set some things right before I was caught,” Dan met Phil’s gaze, “But, I’d never hurt you, anyway.”

Phil sighed, “I figured you hadn’t hurt anyway. I just… I don’t know. It’s–”

“Get some sleep, Phil,” Dan urged, observing how obviously frazzled Phil had been acting. Of course, Phil’d just learned more “out-of-this-world” information than probably any other human knew, so naturally he’d be a bit struck. The fact he hadn’t slept for too long only added to the confusion.

“Good night,” Phil mumbled as he began to walk out of the room.

“Time is a–”

“I know.”

* * *

Phil had always taken a full night’s sleep for granted, and he realized so as he was awoken by Dan lightly shaking his shoulder with a guilty smile on his face. It’d been about a week since their in depth talk about Dan’s life, and the subject had only been lightly brushed since.

“I did something wrong,” he bit his lip, and then Phil smelt burning.

He inwardly groaned, throwing his blanket off his legs and sitting up. “Is something on fire?”

“No,” Dan responded. “I don’t know what I did wrong but I did _something_.”

“Alright,” Phil stood, “show me.”

Dan unsurprisingly brought Phil to the kitchen. He opened the microwave door and took out the mug that sat inside, causing Phil to grimace at the sight.

“I was trying to make hot chocolate,” Dan attempted justifying the chocolate bar that sat in the mug, partially burned. Dan had managed to _burn_ the chocolate.

“Jesus Christ, Dan,” Phil sighed, but a smile slipped through his facade. “That’s entirely _not_ how you do it.”

“Obviously.”

Phil continued to show Dan how to make hot chocolate, and by that time he couldn’t very well fall back to sleep. So, he started some coffee.

The rest of the day was mostly lazy; Dan was entranced by another romance movie while Phil filmed a video that he would later upload to YouTube, the subject of said video dancing around the fact he now technically had a roommate – a galactic alien criminal at that.

As though Dan could see through walls (could he?), he entered the room as soon as Phil had stopped recording.

“I’ve decided I want to try kissing again,” he announced, plopping down on the bed next to Phil. His skirt flared as he sat, but it quickly fell flat against his legs.

“I’m not sure you do.” Phil laughed, but Dan’s expression didn’t budge.

“I do. And also this.” He looped his hand into Phil’s, intertwining their fingers.

Phil sucked in a breath, letting his fingers loosely tangle with Dan’s. He became suddenly aware of the amount of sweat on his palm.

“I kind of understand what they mean, now,” Dan said, looking down at their two hands. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah?” Phil swallowed. “Do you have anything like this back home?”

“ _Don’t_ call it home,” Dan snapped, but continued, “Not really, though. We don’t communicate a whole lot as is.” Before Phil could reply, Dan began speaking again, “But I like this. I like you.”

“Thanks–”

“I mean it. I like you more than anyone I’ve ever known before,” Dan nodded in sincerity, though even having feelings like he possessed for Phil towards another being was somewhat new.

Phil smiled halfheartedly, mainly because he was locked in thought.

What was to hold him back? He didn’t have a “wall” built. He didn’t care much for the social stigma of loving someone not known for long. As far as Phil was concerned, he could easily love someone on the first day they’d met. If he cared about someone – cared about their well being and happiness and felt he connected with them on the first day they met, nothing was stopping him from loving them. He never said so, though, because other humans thought in other ways and he didn’t like to make anyone uncomfortable.

Dan happened to be so distinctly different than anyone Phil had ever known, for obvious reasons. Needless to say, Dan wasn’t human. Phil worried that if he were to tell Dan that he loved him, the words would go completely over his head. And that wasn’t Dan’s fault, necessarily.

Dan didn’t understand a lot of things, naturally. Phil just wished he could implant certain concepts into Dan’s brain. Everything would be so much more simple if Dan could grasp what he was getting himself into.

“I don’t know how to do this.” Dan broke Phil from his thoughts.

“Hm?”

“To kiss you. I don’t know how, exactly.” Dan frowned.

“You don’t need to do that.” Phil smiled a conflicted, close-lipped smile.

“You say that,” Dan lifted his hand to push some fringe out of Phil’s face. “but I want to.”

Phil’s expression was pained. He decided he needed to set this all straight with Dan before he got the wrong ideas.

“Look,” Phil started, sliding his hand out of Dan’s. “I don’t know that you really fathom the meaning behind these kind of things. I don’t expect you to. Two romance movies won’t teach you – just, I feel like I’d be taking advantage of your misunderstanding and I really don’t want to do that.”

“I need to tell you something,” Dan spoke softly, seemingly unaffected by Phil’s prior words.

“Go on,” Phil prompted, ready to repeat himself if necessary.

“While you’re sleeping, I go on your computer that you always during the day. It didn’t take me long to realize I could kind of _absorb_ knowledge from it.”

“Oh?”

“I know a lot of things now.” Dan smiled, “Like how to tie shoes and how to speak French and what love encompasses,” he paused, “but I never did stumble across how to correctly make hot chocolate.”

Laughter bubbled from Phil’s chest. His fantasy to implement concepts into Dan’s head from not five minutes ago had become reality before he himself had even thought of the idea.

“Also, did you know camels have three eyelids?”

“Shut up,” Phil didn’t bother trying to contain his glowing smile.

“And goldfish have a memory span of three seconds, if you were wondering.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes. Will you kiss me, now?”

“Your knowledge of useless facts really makes you _irresistible_.” Phil rolled his eyes, but still lifted his hand to Dan’s chin and pulled him in for a chaste kiss on the cheek. After backing away, a devious smirk painted itself across Phil’s face as he stood up started out the door.

“Hey! That’s not–”

“Kissing is a _human construct_ ,” Phil teased, exiting the room with Dan hot at his heels.

* * *

Dan learning through Phil’s laptop took the fun out of some things, but generally it made everything less stressful. No more eating dishwasher tablets; no more burning chocolate.

That didn’t mean no more ridiculous incidents.

For example, one day Phil and Dan agreed on going for a walk. Dan, who’d never seen a pet before, slipped the collar off of a dog that had been leashed to a post.

“Dan!” Phil scolded, catching him just as the dog began to dart away.

“What?”

Phil didn’t try to contain his look of disbelief towards what Dan had just done. “That dog belonged to somebody.”

“…What?”

“That was a _dog_. Dogs are _pets_. Pets belong to _people_.”

“Is that what you all do? Capture smaller creatures?” Dan looked appalled. “To do what with? Eat them!?”

“No, no.” Phil cracked a smile. “They’re like friends, kind of.”

“I wouldn’t tie my friend to a post out in the cold,” Dan deadpanned.

“Dan,” Phil sighed, “they don’t have the mental capacity that you or I have.”

“Um, that’s not what the dog said.” Dan watched the pup sprint around the block corner.

Phil stared at Dan with his eyebrows furrowed. “You’re telling me that you speak _dog_.”

“I told you, I can speak any language I’m exposed to.”

“Well, you can’t just free peoples’ dogs. Even if that’s what’s right.” Phil tried to wrap his head around the fact Dan could speak dog, and therefore any other animal’s language as well.

Dan pursed his lips and nodded; he had to assimilate into the general public. (Though his pink skirts didn’t necessarily help that goal, Dan couldn’t give them up.)

* * *

After Phil had hauled Dan along with him to a Muse concert, Dan had found a point of obsession. Phil bought Dan a pair of headphones and lent him an old phone of his that had all his old music on it, and for the next few days Phil didn’t see Dan ever take the headphones off.

Sure, Dan had heard music before, but only movie soundtracks – background noise. When he really directed his attention to the pulsating rhythms and lyrical voices, he felt as if he were flying, and he knew what flying felt like.

“Can we go to another concert today?” Dan had asked a few days after the initial concert.

Phil snorted. “Concerts are kind of special,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Dan took off one side of the headphones.

“It’s hard to explain.” Phil bit the inside of his cheek.

Dan raised an eyebrow and shrugged, slipping his headphones back on. Phil liked to watch Dan listen; he would sit criss-cross and close his eyes, slightly swaying with the sounds. He appeared to be in his own little world of new found music, and even looking at him made Phil feel a bit more at ease.

Plus, Dan being so entranced by the music left less time for him to force himself into strange predicaments. He couldn’t accidentally drink a whole bottle of wine thinking it was juice – _yes_ , that happened – while he was intent on breathing in time with Muse’s “Unintended”.

One day, Dan began to leave sticky notes around the house, each bearing a different song title. Phil would find them stuck to his bedroom door, on windows, tables – virtually any place they could stick. Phil ignored them at first, but they built up extremely fast. Phil didn’t know he even had that many songs on his old phone. (He didn’t. Dan had took to YouTube.)

“Okay,” Phil said as he walked into the lounge late one evening, pulling a sticky note off of the door frame. “what’s with these?”

Dan perked up at the sound of Phil’s voice, turning his body to face towards Phil. “What about them?”

“Why… are they _everywhere_?”

Dan stood up and snatched the sticky note out of Phil’s hand, slapping it back onto the door frame. “I need to keep all the titles so I don’t forget them,” he said, his eyes wandering around the room, pinpointing every note.

Phil scratched the back of his neck. “Do you want me to buy you a journal?”

Dan just gave Phil a look as if to say, “Go on, explain.”

“It’s like a blank book that you can write in. You can write your song titles in it,” Phil explained, “or really anything else.”

“I like the sticky notes, though,” Dan whined, “Whenever I see them, I remember where I first heard the song.”

Phil creased his eyebrows, “Why are there so many stuck on my bedroom door…?” he trailed, skeptically meeting Dan’s gaze.

“Ah, right.” Dan cleared his throat.

“Do you watch me sleep?” Phil teased, a smile creeping onto his face. At that moment, he didn’t think Dan actually did watch him sleep, but.

“Yeah,” Dan answered, and Phil’s smile slacked. “Wait! It’s just because I don’t understand sleep.”

Phil narrowed his eyes, “Sure, that’s why.” It was slightly strange that Dan’s nighttime agenda consisted of listening to music while watching Phil sleep, but Dan himself was slightly strange, so Phil didn’t think too much of it.

“Seriously. I was thinking that maybe I could sleep if I tried to do it.”

“Well, why haven’t you tried, then?” Phil already knew the answer when he asked the question.

“You’re going to make me say it?” Dan sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. Phil nodded, prompting him. “Fine… I want to be next to you.”

“Thought so,” Phil smirked, trying to maintain an indifferent expression while his insides felt like they were exploding. Since it happened to be late already, Phil invited Dan to join him right away.

As Phil tugged his quilt over himself, settling in for the night, Dan sat atop the covers next to him. Phil lent him a pair of pajama bottoms, since sleeping in a skirt wasn’t necessarily practical. Dan had taken off his headphones for once, though Phil imagined he probably had some song stuck in his head. A few moments passed before Dan, too, tucked himself under the blanket.

“So… what now?” Dan asked, staring into the dark.

“Well,” Phil took a deep breath. “try to relax. Close your eyes.”

Dan did as he was told, fluttering his eyelids closed and trying to sink into the bed. Phil could hear Dan’s breathing next to him, lengthy and soft. Focused on the breathing, Phil felt himself slipping into sleep.

“What am I supposed to think about?” Dan spoke into the quiet laden room, keeping Phil awake.

“Nothing.” Phil breathed, welcoming lethargy.

Dan swallowed, sliding his hand across the blanket until he found Phil’s. Phil didn’t pull away as Dan grasped his hand; instead, he locked their fingers. Phil quickly fell asleep after that, his hand going limp in Dan’s.

* * *

Phil woke as the sunlight seeped through the slits on the blinds, shining into his face. He grunted; every morning he told himself to shut those blinds but he never got around to it.

Dan lied still next to him, one arm draped carelessly over Phil’s chest. Phil carefully lifted Dan’s arm and set it over a ways, then budged his way out of under the covers, as to not disturb the other lying in bed. He failed, pulling a typical Phil-move and knocking over a day-old glass of water that sat upon his nightstand.

“Mmm,” Dan groaned at the noise, squinting his eyes in the light.

Phil cocked his head away from the spilled water in response and asked, “How’d you sleep?”

“Uh,” Dan blinked a few times, obviously dazed, having slept for the first time. “Wasn’t it just dark outside?”

“When you went to sleep it was dark,” Phil stated, directing his attention back to the overturned cup on the floor.

Dan brought his hands up to his face, rubbing at his eyes. He patted his cheeks a bit before sitting up, glaring at the window. “Why do you go to sleep every night if it’s this painful to wake up?” he complained, stretching his arms over his head.

Phil chuckled, “We _have_ to sleep, Dan.”

Dan scoffed, shook his head, and flipped the covers off of himself. He immediately headed to his drawer (Phil had given him the top drawer of his dresser to keep clothes in, so that they wouldn’t constantly be scattered around the floor) and took out another of his pastel pink skirts. He rubbed the fabric between his fingers before setting the skirt back down to slip off his pajama bottoms. Phil cleaned the mess he’d made while Dan dressed himself. After Dan twirled around a few times in his skirt and slipped a black t-shirt over his head, he exited the room because he knew Phil liked privacy while he changed.

When Phil entered the lounge after dressing himself and brushing his teeth, Dan was sat on the floor, tracing patterns on the wood around him. It never made any sense to Phil just why Dan always sat on the floor with his skirt flowered out around him, but he never questioned it, so maybe Dan thought it was normal.

“I’m going shopping,” Phil announced, “You don’t need to come with; it’s just for groceries,” he clarified as Dan began to stand up.

“Okay,” Dan responded, “You sure you can trust me alone?”

Phil recognized this as code-word for “I’m nervous to be alone.”

“I trust you; it’ll only be half an hour, anyway.”

Dan’s devious smile and glint in his eye said to Phil, “time is a human construct” without the alien having to even open his mouth. Phil rolled his eyes in response, continuing out the door. Right, he did have to grocery shop, but he also wanted to buy some things for Dan.

He figured his friend would appreciate a nice journal, so after he’d picked up the groceries, he stopped at a craft shop and picked up a black leather journal and some pens and pencils to go along with it. As he went through the checkout line, a pink crown of flowers caught his attention, and that seemed right up Dan’s alley. So, he bought that as well.

Phil returned home to find Dan sitting on the kitchen counter, eating hot chocolate mix with his fingers. Dan froze with his fingers in his mouth and his eyes wide, staring at Phil with guilt. He removed his chocolate-coated fingers from his mouth shamefully.

“I forgot how to make it again,” he said, pressing the cap back onto the container.

Phil just sighed, taking the hot chocolate container from Dan’s hands and putting it back in the cabinet. He then began unloading groceries and putting them away, though Dan didn’t budge from the counter top. A few times, Phil had to reach around him to put things away behind him, but neither of them really minded when Phil’s hair lightly brushed across Dan’s cheek.

“I got you a few things,” Phil told after he’d finished unpacking everything, a single bag sitting on the counter next to Dan.

“Really?” Dan beamed, looking down at the bag.

“Mhm,” Phil confirmed, “go ahead and look at them.”

Dan took the bag by the handles and set it in his lap, taking out the flower crown first. He poked at the fake flowers with his pointer finger, inspecting the item.

“It goes on your head,” Phil informed, to which Dan nodded and pulled it over his brunet fringe.

Dan then slipped the journal out of the bag, running his fingertips across the leather. He flipped through the pages before setting it on his lap and taking out the writing utensils.

“I told you what a journal was yesterday,” Phil reminded, “You can write song titles in it, or draw, or… I don’t know. You can do anything you’d like with it.”

“I love you,” Dan grinned, hugging the book to his chest.

“You mean ‘I love _it’_.” Phil’s smile was crooked.

“No,” Dan denied, “I meant _you_.”

Dan set down the journal and slid off of the counter, walking the few strides over to Phil before wrapping his arms over Phil’s shoulders. Phil was taken aback for a moment before he clasped his arms around Dan’s waist.

“I feel at home when I’m with you,” Dan mumbled, his breath tickling Phil’s neck. “I mean sure, I’ve just learned the concept of home… but I feel it.”

Phil pulled away and lifted his hand to Dan’s neck, sliding it behind and to the base of his neck. Dan sank into the touch, pressing his neck into Phil’s hand.

“Will you _please_ kiss me now?” Dan whimpered, his eyes flickering back and forth between Phil’s eyes and his lips.

“Since you’ve asked so nicely,” Phil smiled, leaning in to meet Dan’s ever-so-slightly parted lips.

The moment that their lips touched, it was obvious Dan had no clue what he was doing. He sat there, still, while Phil kissed him for a second before pulling away. Phil began to laugh, and Dan frowned.

“I don’t–”

“It’s okay,” Phil chuckled, and in their close proximity, Dan could feel the reverberations from Phil’s laugh in his chest. “Just, follow my lead.”

Phil closed the gap again, this time Dan leaning into it, trailing his lips softly along Phil’s before fully pressing them together. Before either of them had even really realized it, Phil had pushed Dan back into the counter. Dan hopped up onto the counter again, Phil’s torso between his legs.

“You know, you taste like hot chocolate,” Phil lowly teased, bringing up his hand, his pointer finger tracing Dan’s lower lip. “It’s nice, though.”

Naturally, Dan couldn’t find it in him to respond. He simply pulled Phil back towards him, reconnecting their already swollen lips. Dan backed away to take a breath, but Phil jumped on the chance to connect his lips to Dan’s neck. Dan gasped at the contact, exhaling shakily afterwards.

Needless to say, Dan loved kissing.

* * *

That one incident let to many other similar ones and, in turn, opened the door to things like cuddling and teasing and soft kisses along with more intense ones. Time passed and everything became more normalized, Dan feeling less and less “alien” every day.

“Hey,” Phil flicked Dan’s nose, tearing him from his musical world. Dan slipped off the headphones.

“What’s up?”

“I’m going to say this straight away – I know ‘time is a human construct.’ But hey, I’m _human_!” Phil started, “And you’ve officially been here for a month now, so I bought you a cake.”

“Ooh,” Dan grinned, following Phil into the kitchen.

A light pink sheet cake sat on the counter, a stereotypical alien face frosted in the middle. The words “I BELIEVE” were printed across the top.

Dan laughed, “Nice.”

“I thought it really encompassed your personality.” Phil giggled as Dan swiped his finger across the icing, tasting it.

The next cake came at six months, then another at a year. Eventually, Dan lost track of how long he’d been “human” – how long he’d been with Phil. Really, “time is a human construct,” so Dan didn’t worry much about it. And after all, Earth was an unbelievably small pocket in the corner of an infinitely vast universe where Dan could never be found, and somehow he still found Phil.  


End file.
